Clear pale yellow liquid with an odour of sulfur dioxide.

The product is used as a flotation and cyanide detoxification reagent in the mining industry.

It is used as a disinfectant and bleach – particularly for wool, in dyeing for preparing hot and cold Indigo vats, in papermaking in place of sodium hyposulfite to remove chlorine from bleach fibers, to render certain dyes soluble, coagulating rubber latex, as preservative for deteriorative liquors or solutions used for technical purposes, as antiseptic in fermentation, as preservative and bleach for food.